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Nothing could pull her back again, unless she allowed it. Not the nightmares, not the memories, not whatever smear the man who’d made her had left in her blood.
What she did now, for the job, for two women, for herself, was only another way to cast the light.
She moved toward the ugly pulse of red and blue, the bone-rattling thrum of violent music.
The same bouncers flanked the arched door, and this time they sneered.
“Alone this time?”
Still moving, she kicked the one on the left solidly in the groin, smashed her elbow up and out into the bridge of the second’s nose.
“Yeah,” she said as she strode through the path they made as they stumbled back. “Just little old me.”
She walked through the jostling crowd, through the sting of smoke, the crawl of fog. Someone made the mistake of making a playful grab for her and got a boot down hard on his instep for his trouble. And she never broke stride.
She reached the steps, started up their tight curve.
She felt him first, like the dance of sharpened nails along the skin. Then he was there, standing at the top of the stairs, mists swirling dramatically around him.
“Lieutenant Dallas, you’re becoming a regular. No escort tonight?”
“I don’t need an escort.” She stopped on the step below him, knowing it gave him the superior ground. “But I’d like some privacy.”
“Of course. Come with me.” He held out a hand.
She placed hers in it, fought off a jitter of revulsion as his fingers twined with hers. He led her back, away from the crowd, then keyed in a code on his private door. “Enter Dorian,” he said for the voice command, and the locks gave.
Inside candles were lit, dozens of them. Light and shadow, Eve thought again. On the wall screen various sections of the club were displayed, the sound muted, so people danced, groped, screamed, stalked, in absolute silence.
“Some view.” Casually, she stepped away from him and stepped over as if to study the action on screen.
“My way of being surrounded and alone at the same time.” His hand brushed lightly over her shoulder as he walked behind her and over to his bar. “You’d understand that.”
“You talk as if you know me. You look at me as though you do. But you don’t.”
“Oh, I think I do. I saw the understanding of violence, of power, and the taste for it in you. We have that in common. Wine?”
“No. Are you alone here, Dorian?”
“I am.” Despite her answer, he poured two glasses. “Though I planned to entertain a woman later.” This time his gaze traveled over her, boldly intimate. “How interesting it should be you. Tell me, Eve, is this a professional or a personal call?”
She let herself stare at him, into those eyes. “I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out. I know you killed those women.”
He smiled slowly. “Do you? How?”
“I feel it. I see it when I look at you. Tell me how you did it.”
“Why should I? Why would I? Lieutenant.”
As if impatient, she shook her head. “I don’t have a warrant. You know that. I haven’t given you your rights. I can’t use anything you tell me. You know that, too. I just need to know what you are. Why I feel the way I do around you. I don’t believe in…”
There was no mistaking the hunger on his face as he walked toward her. “In what?”
She could hear her father’s voice whispering in her mind. There are things in the dark, little girl. Terrible things in the dark.
“In the sort of thing you’re selling out there.” She gestured toward the screen. “Turn that off, will you? It feels crowded in here.”
“You don’t like to watch?” he said, silkily. “Or be watched?”
